Category: blog

Hello dear reader. We have had a really super afternoon, celebrating children’s writing. Our previous post let you know all about the annual writing competition that we run and who all of the well-deserved winners were.

Below are a small selection of photographs from the afternoon, with author and friend of Chicken and Frog, J.D.Irwin:

Look out for this week’s edition of the Brentwood Gazette and Made in Essex for the full story!

Our annual writing competition was a huge success, with over 700 entries this time around. It was an absolute joy to read all of the stories and poems that were sent in. Congratulations to all who entered, you did yourselves proud.

Thankfully we do not make the final decision; we passed on that huge responsibility to J.D.Irwin, author extraordinaire!

So, after a lot of reading, here are the winners and runners up. We had so many entries from Key Stage 2, that we ended up choosing 2 winners and a runner from that age category!

EYFS: Kamsi Nebo (winner) and Shaun Obi (runner up)

Key Stage 1: Thomas Staunton (winner) and Olivia Eriksson Hassan (runner up)

Key Stage 2: Timmy Akinsehinwa and Archie Harris (winners) and Aimee C (runner up)

Julie will be joining us on Saturday 21st February at 2p.m. to award certificates and prizes. All are welcome to join us.

Hooray for WBD! We will have all of the WBD £1 books in for you – just come in to exchange your voucher for a book or use your £1 voucher towards another book in-store.

The vouchers are given out in schools and nurseries – don’t miss out!

We will be reading stories throughout the day and giving away some little goodie bags – first come, first served.

Thursday 5th February marked the very first #HarryPotterBookNight. Bloomsbury came up with the idea and encouraged bookshops, libraries, schools etc.to take part in this magical night. We decided to shift our event to the Saturday, as we tutor mid-week and felt that a 7p.m. start wasn’t too practical for children (or tired parents) on a school night. And so, #HarryPotterBookNight took place for us just last night.

The idea behind this event was to celebrate the books, rather than the film franchise which so many immediately think of when the name ‘Harry Potter’ is uttered. We were very happy with this. Don’t get me wrong, film and television has it’s place without any shadow of a doubt, but books…well, they’re special too. As the event was free, we had no idea about numbers – we didn’t think to ask people to book in, pardon the pun. To be honest, I thought we’d get between 10-15 children at most. As it turned out, this was a little naive and we ended up with 35 children, plus parents, so it was rather busy in our teaching room last night.

Wizarding hats off to Bloomsbury, who put together a superb resource pack to use. The event began with a reading from ‘The Sorting Hat’ and it was wonderful to see a room of attentive listeners as I read Rowling’s infamous narrative aloud. We sorted our new students into their Houses, sang the Hogwarts song (in a variety of ‘tunes’, volumes and speed) and then split into Houses before the grand Hogwarts Quiz. It was close, however Gryffindor came out as the victors. Bravo to Gryffindor – I was Hufflepuff, but I think that I took the loss graciously.

Once the quiz was over, we drank Butter Beer (cream soda and butterscotch sauce), before icing sticky licky biscuits. Inbetween the sugar, each House designed their own magical creature and penned brand new spells fitting with the characteristics of their allocated House. All in all, it was a brillaint evening of fun, which we are very much looking forward to repeating next year. Here are some pictures of our Hogwarts students:

Do look out for us in the coming week’s edition of the Brentwood Gazette – I am sure that their photographs will be far better than ours!